If you're doing an interview, you need conversational tension. After you talk to them, you're not going to have a relationship with them, they're not going to like you, they're not going to be your friend.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism.

The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.

You're trying to find new ideas in people. I always think to myself, what question I am least comfortable asking the person? And then I make sure I ask it early in the interview.

Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything.

I've been asked about this constantly, and I compare it to how if you're walking down the street and some schizo guy comes up to you and vomits on you: You wouldn't be hurt by that, you'd just think it's weird.

I also did an Ozzy piece for him, and so I got hired. Everything happened really fast. I can't give people advice, because everything in my life changed completely in less than a year and it's still not something I am used to.

At a magazine, everything you do is edited by a bunch of people, by committee, and a lot of them are, were, or think of themselves as writers. Part of that is because magazines worry about their voice.

I grew up on a farm, and we didn't have cable and only limited radio stations, so I wasn't inundated with culture the way people in other parts of the country were. But I was really interested in it.

Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite.

If you're doing an interview, you need conversational tension. After you talk to them, you're not going to have a relationship with them, they're not going to like you, they're not going to be your friend.

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

Even though I wanted to experience all these things I was interested in, I couldn't get them. So I had to think critically and culturally about what was available.

It's just that what's important there is different there than what's important is here. Here, people care that you wrote a book or that you work in the media.

The biggest hurdle to writing Fargo Rock City was that I couldn't afford a home computer - I had to get a new job so I could buy a computer. It could all change though. In five years, I could be back at some daily newspaper, which wouldn't be so bad.

A lot of people have this strategy where if they have a hard question they wait to ask it to the end of the interview because they think the person is going to walk out. But what they have to realize is, is that if the person walks out, they have a pretty successful story.

A whole bunch of months passed and I didn't hear anything and then he emailed and asked if I could do a little piece on POD and Queens of the Stone Age.

To me, every interview, even if you love the artist, needs to be somewhat adversarial. Which doesn't mean you need to attack the person, but you do need to look at it like you're trying to get information that has not been written about before.

I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.

In Fargo, they say, well, that's a job. How well do you get paid? For example, for this book I was written about in Entertainment Weekly, and it was kind of cool because my mom asked me if Entertainment Weekly was a magazine or a newspaper.

I keep saying the word "weird" over and over again, but it's the only way I can describe it.

It didn't seem remotely possible. I had no idea how people got those jobs, I didn't know what the steps were, it never even dawned on me. It seemed so outside the realm of possibility.

When you're writing for newspapers you have all these parameters. You can't swear, you have to use short paragraphs, all that. If you stay within those parameters, you have lots of freedom because you're writing for the next day.

I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.

I keep saying the word 'weird' over and over again, but it's the only way I can describe it.

Every generation is more influenced by technology which is always changing faster.

The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision.

It is important to have questionable friends you can trust unconditionally.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

I have a friend in New York who's a stylist and I went over to her place because she's got a lot of clothes. I basically ended up wearing most of it. So it's all stuff that I brought over.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.

This friend of mine said he was surprised to find that - I don't think it's quite a majority - a bigger percentage of actors are introverts than extroverts. It was a big surprise to him. Now, I know me, and I'll do anything if I'm playing a character. Or anything that's true to the character, anyway. But in real life I'm a little more withdrawn.